After five prior games, alongside a handful of spin-offs and even movie releases, it’s about time that developer Io-Interactive lined up the perfect shot for their “Hitman” franchise.

Although released piecemeal starting in March last year, the game’s “complete first season” of content was released as a retail disc and online bundle in February.

“Hitman” -- the first game in the franchise to not have a subtitle, surprisingly -- follows the career and adventures of a professional assassin with a cue-ball haircut known only by his codename: 47.

The game features a total of nine explicit “hits,” spread across six locations throughout the world in scenarios ranging from a fashion show at a museum in France, an ongoing riot outside an embassy in Morocco, and even a secret hospital for the rich and powerful in the mountains of Japan.

Violence, as one might expect, is the bread and butter of the franchise, but “Hitman” encourages players to take a more cerebral approach to their killing rather than an outright massacre.

Players are rated based upon their performance in each mission and are strictly penalized if they murder bystanders and guards, armed or otherwise.

Instead, players are supposed to hide in plain sight through a combination of disguises, likely taken by knocking out the aforementioned guards, careful study of their environment, and execute clever improvisation for the hit itself.

Players will typically have the option to simply shoot their targets, but lateral thinking is frequently rewarded through the game, resulting in more options for further improvisation by unlocking different firearms, distraction devices and rubber ducks hiding remote explosives.

Many of the “accidental” kills throughout the game require players to fully explore their environment, research the targets, and quietly put together a domino effect that will lead to a most unfortunate catastrophe -- much to a player’s personal satisfaction and hunt for the title of “Silent Assassin.”

Take the previously mentioned fashion show, for instance. One could shoot the crooked fashion designer as he makes his triumphant curtain call -- but other options provide a far more subtle and easily escapable alternative. You could pour rat poison into his post-show martini or “accidentally” weaken the support structure of the lighting rig, for instance.

What makes discovering possible solutions an enjoyable experience comes from the mechanical nature of the game’s world. Missions may feature hundreds of individual characters milling about at any given time, but almost all of them have a set routine as they go about their day.

Finding those patterns and exploiting the weaknesses remains the high point of the franchise, and this release fortunately distills the experience by doing away with the unnecessary baggage of heavy narrative or “inter-hit” levels showing how 47 gets from point A to point B.

Additionally, the game is continuing to receive support from the developer through bi-weekly “elusive targets.”

These missions add new targets to the existing levels as well as unique tweaks ranging from more armed guards to erratic patterns. Some of these targets include celebrity appearances, such as one that required players to take out Gary Busey.

These targets are only available to players once, disappearing forever after a week or so and, worse yet, cannot be attempted again if a player fails.

But all of a players training in a given level, as well as their additional equipment they’ve unlocked from previous play-throughs, can come into the mission.

The addition of these targets elevates the level of tension in the game, adding an actual punitive element for failure frequently missing from video games -- not seen since lost quarters at an arcade decades ago.

Players who master the initial missions can also replay the levels through collections of “escalations,” which add restrictions or obstacles to the assassinations, or create their own assassination contracts on any characters wandering the levels and share them with other players.

Hitman is a rare sequel, able to please both fans of the franchise as well as provide an excellent starting point for newcomers.